How to Keep Your Focus Razor Sharp

How to Keep Your Focus Razor Sharp: There’s a woman I know, a writer and consultant, who says she’s more stressed out by what she’s not doing than what she is doing. When she’s in the flow of work, she’s consumed by it, productive, engaged. But when she’s not and instead worrying about what she has to get done, she says she “hovers like a gnat around her work, not landing on anything, not getting anything done, and completely stressed out about it.”

Be Like Mike: Three Keys to Collaboration and Winning

Be Like Mike: Three Keys to Collaboration and Winning: This weekend Adam Scott’s caddie Steve Williams (Tiger Wood’s old caddie), was part of a major tournament win for the 14th time in his career. Williams carried the bag for 13 majors and three Masters wins for Tiger Woods before he was fired. This weekend, he helped Scott to his first

4 Questions You Should be Asking Your Employees

4 Questions You Should be Asking Your Employees: Are you having trouble motivating your employees? Struggling to figure out what resources your team is lacking? Not sure what you can do to make your management style more effective?

8 Ways To Achieve Better Work-Life Balance

8 Ways To Achieve Better Work-Life Balance: For most people, juggling the demands of a career and a personal life is an ongoing challenge, especially at a time when many companies have slashed their ranks–and expect more from the survivors.

Excellence From A To Z: 26 Qualities to Strive For

Excellence From A To Z: 26 Qualities to Strive For: The Greek Stoics believed that life is about learning to die. I like to think about it another way: reflecting on death can teach us how to live.

Good Employees Make Mistakes. Great Leaders Allow Them To.

Good Employees Make Mistakes. Great Leaders Allow Them To.: As a business leader, I found that one of the scariest things to do was to give your people the freedom to make mistakes. While mistakes allow individuals to learn and grow, they can also be very costly to any company. Scared as I was, I knew that truly great leaders found ways to allow their people to take these risks, and I genuinely wanted to be a great leader. I wanted to help my employees to grow. So I set out to discover how to accomplish this without placing my company in jeopardy. 

Change Is Hard. Remembering These 2 Things Will Make It Easier

Change Is Hard. Remembering These 2 Things Will Make It Easier: A rising star at one of the world's major consulting firms is munching on his shrimp and cashews at the Chinese restaurant across the street from his office in mid-town Manhatan. It's been a tough week. He's put in three consecutive fourteen-hour days at the office in order to satisfy a demanding client and there will be  a six-hour plane trip tomorrow.

How To Conduct A Personal S.W.O.T. Analysis

How To Conduct A Personal S.W.O.T. Analysis: An effective process companies use to assess themselves and their competitors and formulate their strategies is an analysis called “S.W.O.T.” But this exercise isn’t just for businesses. It can be helpful for job seekers and those who are looking to climb the career ladder, too. Here’s how the process works…

Get Noticed! Four Easy Steps to Climbing the Corporate Ladder

Get Noticed! Four Easy Steps to Climbing the Corporate Ladder: As a board member on dozens of companies, the CEO of several firms, and an executive on many more, I have spent countless hours behind closed doors with fellow leaders discussing what employee should be promoted within the company.  Have you ever walked by a conference room and wished you were a fly on the wall? You probably thought to yourself, what are we talking about in there?  Well, I’ll tell you.  We discuss competitive analysis reports and sales trends, new products launches and financial statements. We talk about strategy, expansion and legal issues. And – we talk about you.

5 Leadership Lessons for Today's Executive

5 Leadership Lessons for Today's Executive: The poster of 12 O’clock High, the 1949 Gregory Peck-led vehicle centering on the underperforming 918th Bomber Group, hangs framed in my Aveksa office. This is not because of its reputation as one of the best WWII films to emerge from the glut of late 1940’s war-centric cinema, but as a constant reminder of the timeless lessons of leadership the film triumphed.  Through juxtaposing the leaderships styles of Colonel Davenport and Brigadier General Frank Savage, 12 O’clock High explored what it meant to be an effective leader of troops.  Its lessons, which I will explore in this week’s column, can be translated from the harrowing skies above WWII Europe to the (significantly less dangerous) modern workplace.

Time Management Secrets Anyone Can Use

Time Management Secrets Anyone Can Use: If you’re reading this article instead of doing your work, chances are good that you have trouble managing your time efficiently. You’re not alone. According to a survey by Salary.com, 90% of workers waste at least a half hour each workday, not including lunch or scheduled breaks. While computers have dramatically increased efficiency, they have also provided the ultimate in distraction. The Web is like the next-door neighbor who keeps asking us to play when we know we have homework to do. It and e-mail offer so much distraction on a minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour basis that we find it nearly impossible to give our full attention to higher-level tasks. Because there are no defined edges to most of our projects–and certainly not to our workdays–we live in an endless jumble of work and life. We can book a trip to Mexico while participating in a conference call. We can send work e-mails from a chairlift above the ski slopes of Vermont. It’s tough to establish boundaries and focus on any one thing.

3 Tips for Getting Your Organization to Move, Now

3 Tips for Getting Your Organization to Move, Now: My colleague PJ Chan was recently involved in helping a global pharmaceutical company take on an enormous challenge. Here she offers tips leaders can follow to generate the momentum their company needs to achieve success.

Three Questions for Business Leaders to Ask When Surprise Hits

Three Questions for Business Leaders to Ask When Surprise Hits: Despite tremendous developments in business strategy over the last fifty years, businesses and governments keep being disrupted by events that they might have seen coming, but didn't. In other words, they get surprised? and not in a happy, surprise party kind of way. Think 9/11, the Arab spring, Fukushima or the launch of the iPhone for Nokia. Such events often have consequences far beyond their immediate environment that make many firms suffer, and require a response that isn't in anyone?s existing playbook.  The late Steve Jobs ? no slouch when dealing with disruption in the marketplace ? once replied that his strategy was to ?wait for the next big thing.?

Five Important Lessons From A Trip To The Apple Store

Five Important Lessons From A Trip To The Apple Store: Want to sell more stuff? Take some tips from the folks who do it best.

Be a Giver Not a Taker to Succeed at Work

Be a Giver Not a Taker to Succeed at Work: I recently spoke to Adam Grant, who is the youngest tenured professor and single highest-rated teacher at The Wharton School. He is a former record-setting advertising director, junior Olympic springboard diver, and professional magician. He has been honored as one of BusinessWeek's favorite professors and one of the world's top 40 business professors under 40. His consulting and speaking clients include Google, the NFL, Goldman Sachs, Merck, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, and the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force. His new book is called Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success.

How to Get Others to See Your Potential

How to Get Others to See Your Potential: Chris was starting to worry. For eight years, he’d been on the fast track at his large, multinational company. But suddenly, his career began to stall. “I ended up replacing a VP and didn’t get the promotion,” he told me. “Then I replaced another VP and didn’t get that promotion, either. I was going through performance reviews and everyone said ‘you exceed expectations,’ but then I was asked to report to another Senior Director. Alarm bells went off - what am I doing wrong? What am I missing?”

How To Become A Better Superman

How To Become A Better Superman: Are you an idealist or a pragmatist? It’s one of the great dilemmas of life, but finding the perfect balance is quite simple. You simply have to become a better Superman.

When Measuring Impact, Ask the Right Questions

When Measuring Impact, Ask the Right Questions: Editor’s Note: Ehren Reed is a Research and Evaluation Officer for the Skoll Foundation. He is responsible for assessing the impact and effectiveness of the Foundation’s efforts in order to support ongoing learning and evidence-based decision making.

Don't Rely On Luck At Work: Define Your Career Aspirations And Goals

Don't Rely On Luck At Work: Define Your Career Aspirations And Goals: Do you feel like a cork bobbing in a stream going wherever the current takes you? Instead of relying on luck and hope, take control of your career by defining your aspirations and goals.

6 Easy Ways To Remember Someone's Name

6 Easy Ways To Remember Someone's Name: Maybe you have trouble recalling your clients’ names. Perhaps you draw a blank every time you introduce a new colleague to co-workers. You're constantly thinking to yourself: Is it Joan or Jane? Tim or Tom? Larry or Barry?